Almost film’s last hurrah, the “Advanced Photo System”, was developed jointly by Kodak, Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, and Minolta after nearly a decade of research. The consortium reportedly invested well over US$1 billion in the system.
They say timing is everything, and unfortunately, the APS arrived at exactly the wrong time. Within five years of its 1996 launch, digital cameras advanced so rapidly that APS never really got off the ground. It never had the opportunity to mature into the successful format its backers envisioned.
APS wasn't simply a new film size, or another of Kodak’s seeming endless efforts to promote smaller film sizes, It was an entirely new system designed to make photography easier and smarter. Its major innovations included a simple cartridge for drop-in film loading that eliminated the need to thread a leader onto the pickup spool. All APS cameras had motorized film advance and rewind. And a magnetic strip along the film’s edge, to record the exposure data, print instructions (cropping, etc) etc. This IX (Information Exchange) data was essentially to an APS negative, what the EXIF data is to a digital photograph today.
APS allowed for three selectable print formats without changing lenses: H (High Definition) gave a 16:9 aspect ratio to match modern digital TVs. C (Classic) matched the 3:2 aspect ratio of standard 35mm film, while P (Panorama gave a 3:1 aspect ratio.
But there is one clever bit in this that is often misunderstood. Regardless of which format the photographer selected, the camera always exposed the entire frame. The chosen format was merely recorded magnetically for the photo lab’s automatic cropping. This also allowed for different print cropping to be made on later prints from the same negative.
The auto rewind and advance feature meant that cameras could rewind and reload film rolls, making it possible to switch rolls, mid-stream, without wasting a single shot Although commercially unsuccessful, APS introduced concepts that became standard in digital photography.
Among them were the concept of metadata stored with each image, automated film (and later, memory card) handling, and the viability of smaller image formats. Today, the term APS-C, denotes a smaller sensor using the APS "Classic" frame size of 25.1 × 16.7 mm.
Most APS cameras were compact point-and-shoot models. Only three interchangeable-lens SLR systems were produced: Canon’s EOS IX, Minolta’s Vectus and Nikon’s Pronea. Of these, Nikon's Pronea S was arguably the most technically interesting.
Introduced in September 1998, the Pronea S was advertised as the world's smallest and lightest autofocus SLR, from any maker. Nikon targeted travellers and women photographers who wanted SLR capability without the bulk of a traditional 35mm camera. (Indeed, one of Digital Camera World’s editors bought one for his wife, which would still be in use today if you could still buy the film.)
The Pronea S looks unlike almost any Nikon before or since. Its designers concentrated on making the body as thin as possible. The result resembled an early digital camera more than a film SLR. NIkon’s engineers endowed it with all the bells and whistles; including a Nikon F-derived lens mount, phase-detection autofocus, Multi-segment Matrix Metering, built-in flash and a 1.5 fps shooting speed. And unlike most APS cameras, the Pronea S provided nearly all the exposure controls found on Nikon's contemporary 35mm SLRs.
The IX Nikkor lenses made for the Pronea models covered only the smaller APS format and so were unusable on NIkon’s 35mm cameras. But the modified F-mount meant the camera could use most contemporary Nikon autofocus lenses, including Nikon’s AF, AF-D and many of the AF-S series of lenses could be used with a 1.6 crop factor, foreshadowing Nikon’s later use of DX lenses and APS-C sized sensors for digital SLRs.
Reviewers at the time said it handled remarkably well, and praised its fast autofocus, excellent metering, bright finder, and good ergonomics. But APS negatives have only about 56% of the image area of a 35 mm negative. Although APS films employed finer-grain emulsions, enlargements beyond about 8 × 10 inches generally showed more grain than comparable 35 mm photographs. Add in the fact that APS film and processing cost more than ordinary 35 mm and that many labs declined to make the investment in APS processing machinery when they could see the digital revolution coming, and it’s easy to see why the Advanced Photo System failed.
Between 1998 and 2002, digital cameras improved dramatically rapidly increasing in resolution while prices fell. Consumers increasingly preferred instant image review and no film processing costs. By 2002, major manufacturers had largely switched to digital cameras and Kodak ceased APS film production in 2011. In the end, it seems that APS had a bigger influence on digital photography than it did on film.
Read more of David Young's ongoing series on classic cameras, as well as his book A Brief History of Photography.
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